1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to an equalizer, and more particularly to a quarter-rate adaptive charge-average switched-capacitor equalizer.
2. Description of Related Art
An equalizer is an essential building block adopted in digital communications for the purpose of reducing intersymbol interference (ISI) while recovering transmit symbols. A conventional equalizer includes, among others, a current-mode logic (CML) adder, which nevertheless consumes considerable power. Due to poor performance of a linear equalizer, a decision feedback equalizer, a nonlinear equalizer, has been used to replace the linear equalizer. However, the decision feedback mechanism adopted in the decision feedback equalizer is complex in nature and thus limits the operating speed of an equalizer, particularly in complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) design.
For the foregoing reasons, a need has thus arisen to propose a novel equalizer to overcome the disadvantages of conventional equalizers.